That means if Trump is convicted he’s likely going to jail because he won’t have the power to pardon himself as he otherwise could in a federal conviction, should he be re-elected. The only option he would have is to apply to Georgia’s State Board of Pardons and Paroles – and only after five years had passed since his conviction.
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Secondly, the 97-page indictment is arguably the most sweeping one he faces yet. It essentially accuses those involved of a wide-ranging conspiracy that reached from the Oval Office to a rural county in Georgia, with more than 160 acts aimed at keeping Trump power.
The most well-known involves the now-infamous phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, urging him to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to put him ahead of Biden.
But it also involved, among other things, defendants setting up phony electors to produce fake votes; making false representations to the courts; harassing an election worker; misusing the power of the Justice Department and pressuring other state and federal officials, including former vice president Mike Pence, not to certify Biden’s win.
Thirdly, while Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump in Washington portrayed him as the ringleader of a far-reaching election subversion plot without naming his alleged co-conspirators, the Georgia indictment names 18 co-defendants.
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Among them are White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.
There are also about 30 unnamed co-conspirators drawn up in the charges, too.
With so many people now facing the possibility of conviction, there’s always a chance that some might cut a deal with prosecutors and flip on the former president.
And finally, Georgia is a state that allows cameras into its courtrooms, which means that if the case makes it to trial it will be televised for the world to watch – and for the court of public opinion to assess.
The jury pool will also be drawn largely from Atlanta’s heavily Democratic, majority black population, and the trial itself will pit Republican defendants against Republican witnesses – such as Raffensperger and Pence – who had sought to do the right thing.
That said, the charges, overseen by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, are hardly a slam dunk: officials have never used RICO laws in a case such as this before because, let’s face it, there has never been such a precedent.
Trump, meanwhile, insists that he is innocent and has accused Willis of yet another political witch-hunt designed to stop him becoming president.
It’s an accusation that resonates among many Republicans.
After all, Willis, the first black woman to serve as Fulton County district attorney, is also a Democrat whose victory in 2020 came amid a wave of reform-minded progressive prosecutors’ winning seats.
Among them was Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who charged Trump in April for alleged hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
What’s more, she did herself no favours recently when she hosted a political fundraiser for the political opponent of one of the so-called fake electors her investigation was targeting. A judge called it a “what-are-you-thinking moment” and disqualified her office from prosecuting him.
Trump and his co-defendants now have until August 25 to voluntarily surrender in court, and Willis has signalled, somewhat optimistically, that she wants a trial in the next six months.
But the former’s president’s legal team is likely to try to delay the case and Trump says he will hold a press conference on Monday to release an “irrefutable” report that would somehow prove his false claims of election fraud in Georgia.
Whether the report has any substance is yet to be seen, particularly as officials and courts have never found any evidence to back up the claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
But what is clear is that America is in uncharted waters yet again, thanks to a twice impeached, four-times indicted ex-president who is currently the leading Republican candidate for next year’s election. What a time.
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